A storyteller since childhood, William Edmund Butterworth, III, was born November 10, 1929, in Newark, New Jersey, to William E. Butterworth and Gladys (Schnable) Butterworth (who later became Mrs. Irving L. Cottrell). He married Emma Josefa Macalik, a dancer in the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera, in 1950, with whom has three children. Butterworth lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

He served in the Korean War as a combat correspondent and was associated with the United States Army as a senior technical writer before turning to writing fiction full time. He had been writing since leaving high school, first for adults and then, persuaded by his agent Malcolm Reiss, for young people. He has published well over a hundred books under his own and a dozen pen names. Since he had not written for young people before, he wrote his first book, The Wonders of Astronomy...